


The Liar, the Bitch, and the Closet

by NoxiousToxins



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, chronically uncomfortable keith
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-07-03 14:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15821094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoxiousToxins/pseuds/NoxiousToxins
Summary: Keith is gay, closeted, but gay nonetheless.  Lance is bi, though he spends most of his time around women. Not that Keith blames him. High School is rough. Even rougher when you're outted.





	1. A look into the closet

**Author's Note:**

> Tags will be added as chapters are added. This is my first fic on this site and i dont know how to use it very well but I'm learning! So, please be nice! and remember to comment! :P

“I think Lance hates me.” Keith said, watching as Lance and Hunk walked away from where they sat outside. He had made some excuse about classes and homework, but wouldn’t look at Keith the whole time he was there. Now, that wasn’t unusual. Lance didn’t try to make nice with Keith, they were friends but at the end of the day, that was probably only because they were friends with the same two people. Keith turned to look at Pidge, who was looking at him like he had said something wrong. It wasn’t an odd look to get from Pidge, she was smarter than he was, and plenty more observant. 

“You think Lance hates you.” She deadpanned. 

“He ignores me and avoids me all the time. He doesn’t even want to look at me half the time, and when he does, he’s staring at me like I’m some kind of alien.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest. He wasn’t pouting. Okay maybe he was, but really, Lance was being rude for no reason and Keith had a big gay crush on him. That’s right, broody, emo Keith has a gross, soul-crushing crush on an overly flirtatious and stunningly attractive ladies man.

“Keith, my child, you are so, so very ignorant.” Pidge chuckled. She always seemed to know more that everyone around her. Maybe she was just pretending. Maybe she had won the ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ game, and really didn’t know what was happening most of the time and just said things that sounded smart but were really gibberish. Keith shook his head, as much as he would love if that were true, he knew it wasn’t. If intelligence was as race, Pidge could run laps around Keith on her worst day. So, Keith settled on the usual fall back.

“I’m older than you, and I could kick your ass if I wanted to.”

“But you won’t.” she said with a smug smile before grabbing her bag and motioning for them to follow. Keith looked at his phone and realized that the bell was about to ring. He followed her in silently, thinking of what he could have done to make Lance so upset. It couldn’t be something terrible, since he still came to hang out with Pidge and him, even without Hunk being there. Mostly he as quiet during those times, unless Keith spoke up, then it almost always sparked an argument. It was like he wanted nothing but for Keith to never speak again. Maybe that was it, maybe Lance was annoyed by Keith and the fact that he never could follow what Lance was saying. Contrary to popular belief, it was actually one of the things he liked about Lance, his brain was always going; and yes, he was hard to follow but Keith could listen to his explanations all day.  
Keith absentmindedly walked into the classroom and sat down where he usually sat. 

“Hi, Keith!” he heard a high pitched, excited voice beside him, breaking him out of his stupor. He looked up at the person beside him, his biology partner. She didn’t usually show up, but when she is in class, she tended to talk the whole time. Honestly, Keith didn’t remember her name, not that she cared, she talked with no concern for others around her. He paused and slowly nodded in her direction as a hello. Much to his dismay, she started talking as Keith was jotting down the notes on the board.

“Today is going so slow, ya know? Like nothing interesting has happened all day. Like the whole week has been boring, literally nothing good has happened this week. Like, for example, this one girl came up to me the other day and she like started stuttering and like, she said I was really pretty and she liked my eyes. Which was weird cause I barely know her, and she must have been looking at me a lot to notice my eye colour, right? Right. So anyway, it sounded like she was trying to say something, she never ended up saying anything though, she just ran away. I got this feeling like she was in love with me. She was probably a lesbian or something. I’m pretty liberal but it don’t need all those kinda of people shoving it in my face, like if you want to go against nature, go ahead, but don’t drag me down with you, ya know?”

She continued talking, but Keith didn’t hear anything after that. She must not have noticed the way his shoulders tensed, and the nervous shaking of his hands. She didn’t know, of course she didn’t, no one did. Well, Pidge did, and Lance and Hunk, and Shiro, but no one else knew. He was like area 51 to these people, and they just didn’t know it. And for some reason, the popular group of kids always wanted him around, but no matter how many times he turned them down, walked away, didn’t answer, they always just told him he had to come next time. He didn’t even know most of their names, but if they all felt like this girl did about gays, he knew he wouldn’t get alone with any of them, not to mention they’d never ask him to hang out again. Keith was starting to forget the down sides of being out. Other than the public humiliation that was sure to follow, along with the ridicule, and just general unhappiness that came to high school being doubled because not only was he no longer be respected, he would be an outcast that no one cared about. Ya, okay, maybe staying in the closet would be good until high school ended. That wasn’t too far away anyhow. He was already in grade 12, so that meant less than a year of nonsense. He could do that.

“Keith, baby, are you even listening to me?” Keith heard his name and popped his head up, he looked around and saw the girl beside him staring intently. She put a hand on his arm, which he quickly removed, and gave him an expectant look. “So… Are you coming?”  
She must have invited him somewhere, again. He looked back down at his book, pretending to read his notes, and replied with a short, “No.” He heard her whine and saw a pouty face out of the corner of his eye.

“You never want to do anything fun.” She said. The bell that signaled the end of biology rang, and Keith picked up his books and bag. 

“Then stop inviting me.” He snarked before walking away briskly, heading to physics. One of the few classes he shared with Lance.

“So, I heard Nyma invited you to come to a party this weekend.” Lance said quietly, as he worked away at their worksheet. He must have been talking about the girl in biology earlier, that must be what he missed her asking. “Man, all the girls want you to come.” Lance continued, “They all think you’re so cute. One of them said you were otherworldly.” There was a hint of bitterness in his voice. Keith suspected it was probably because no one was paying attention to him. Lance was a bit of an attention whore. Not that it was a bad thing. With a family like Lance’s, attention was probably spread so thin that Lance didn’t get much. Lance deserves attention. Keith would give him all the attention he wanted, if only he’d ask. He heard Lance hum and watched as he propped his head up on his hand, looking out the window, “If they only knew…” he mumbled. Keith’s head shot up, hand smacking against the table, getting Lance’s attention. Lance put his hands in a defense position, and quietly whispered to Keith, “It was a joke… you know I would never.” 

Keith did know. Lance wasn’t shy about his attraction to people. Not women, not men, just people. Lance made it abundantly clear that gender didn’t matter to him. At least, to their little group of friends. Outside their group, Lance was a chronic flirt, but only with women. No one knew about either of them, and they were both pretty content to keep it that way.


	2. What was found there

Every high school is different. At least a far as Keith was concerned. Every school he heard about had different things going on. Things that no one outside, unless told, would ever know about. Things like, the app Pidge created. The app was an extracurricular project that Pidge had taken up so that she wouldn’t fail Entrepreneurship. She had missed too many classes to pass the course because it ‘wasn’t a constructive use of time’ and found the class ‘boring’ and that it ‘lacked intellectual depth’. Little did she know she needed it to graduate, which is where the app came from. It was her own personal project that let the teacher overlook the absences.

The app is was simple. It was like a blog for the school. Except only the students were allowed on. This allowed them to share links and answers to assignments. It had plenty of uses besides academic though. Pidge had made the app with pages, to keep the posts sorted. It was an insurance policy too. If a page got too out of hand, Pidge just deleted it. Or if the principle found out about the sharing of answers, she could delete the page, which was significantly less suspicious and easier than trying to delete the app.

Everyone in the school had it, which gave Pidge an ego boost that was not needed in Keith’s opinion. Keith never really went on it. He had no reason too, but he had it because Pidge wanted to graduate and needed a certain number of downloads.

There was one page that Pidge was always on the edge of taking down. It was a user created page called #pageofshame, and it is exactly what you’d think it is. Most of the posts in it were friends making fun of friends. Posts about that one guy trying to eat an entire pizza pop in one bite and how one student’s locker always smells like weed are popular in the #pageofshame. The problem with it is that sometimes it is used to make people feel bad about themselves, and that’s why Pidge is always one bad post from taking it down. Most of them weren’t bad, and only every once and a while a bad post would pop up, and instead of taking away the whole page, Pidge just deleted the post, since she wasn’t a fan of group punishment.

But there is always someone who has to ruin the fun.

 

The morning went by in a blur, as it usually does since Keith was too tired to care about what was happening in class. By lunch he knew something was up. Everyone was acting weird, not just people who didn’t like him, but even those that seemed to always want him to come out with them. Now, that wasn’t entirely a problem; Keith was glad they had stopped talking to him, but now it seemed like they were talking _about_ him instead.

“Hey…” Pidge’s voice came from beside him; she stood oddly quiet next to him, shuffling her feet and gripping her binder extra tight.

“Hi.” He responded, they were supposed to meet outside today, not a Keith’s locker. Keith wasn’t good with people, but even he could see something was wrong. He watched as Pidge fidgeted a bit before asking, “What’s wrong?”

“You… haven’t seen it?” Her voice was quiet, a small, pained sound.

“Seen… what?” he said a bit apprehensively. She looked down at the ground and went to grab her phone out of her back pocket.

            “Before you see it. We don’t know how they found out, but I’ve already blocked the page, and no one else can see it.” She showed him a screen shot, at least that’s what he assumed it to be, since she said she had taken the page down and he trusted her. Though, apparently, he should rethink the people he does trust.

            He shook as he reread the letters on the phone carefully.

_So! I finally found out why Keith Kogane doesnt want to date me! He’s like Supes GAY! *gasp* Why do all the pretty ones have to be gay?_

            It was from Nyma’s user. It was Nyma. Of course, it was Nyma, who else would post something so personal about someone else, and simultaneously have terrible grammar.

             Thankfully, Pidge was still hanging onto her phone, because otherwise Keith would have smashed it. This can’t be happening. Why him? Why now? Keith told himself he was going to leave this hick town and go be gay somewhere else and no one here would ever have to know, at least no one than those he had already told.

            Keith leaned his head against his locker. He was not going to cry, not here, not because of Nyma. Or who ever had told her. She was so not smart enough to figure it out on her own. Not to mention she as way too self-centered. There is no way she could have paid enough attention to anyone who wasn’t herself long enough to observe and critically think about their actions and what it could mean, let alone make the connection that Keith was gay, especially with her less than excitable attitude towards the LGBT community. No, someone told her. It wouldn’t be Pidge, she wouldn’t do that to him, and if she did, she definitely wouldn’t show him the post, she isn’t a good enough actor for that.

Hunk? Hell no. Hunk didn’t have a mean bone in his body.

That left… Lance. He wouldn’t, Keith could out him as well. But them again, what he had said the day before, ‘If they only knew’ sounds like a threat. Maybe that’s where he got the idea. He probably thought it would make Nyma like him. Get Keith out of the way and voila, Lance can move in.

Keith was going to kill Lance.

Keith stood up straight, grabbed his bag off the ground, and stomped his was out of the school.

“Keith!” Pidge shouted, “Keith! Where are you going?” Her voice was frantic, she was probably scared he was going to hurt someone. Not that she was wrong.

 

“Lance!” Keith screamed across the green. He had been looking for Lance all morning, and he was going to break his bones. “Lance! You absolute douche bag of a person!”

Lance looked up from his lunch, a little startled. “Hi?” he sounded more than a little confused. He put his lunch down and looked cautiously at Keith. Lance looked a bit scared, as he should be. He was about to be sent to the hospital barely breathing. “Are you okay?”

Keith blinked at him. He was not expecting that. What did Lance mean, is he okay? Of course he’s not okay! “What the fuck, man?” It wasn’t really a question.  “How could you- You said-” he tried to sputter out a clear thought, “What the _fuck_ could you _possibly_ get out of this?”

“Uhh… Out of what?” Lance stood to look at Keith. For someone about to die, Lance was oddly calm and collected. It almost sounded like Lance was trying to soothe Keith, only God knows why. Maybe he was trying to throw Keith off? Make Keith trust him again. Look at how well that worked out for him the first time. Lance was up to something.

“Out of this…this… _situation_! What did I _ever_ do to you?” Keith screamed, with hot tears in his eyes. He grabbed Lance by the collar of his shirt and pulled roughly. “You knew I wanted to keep it to myself and you… you just… _ripped_ it away from me! It was yesterday… I…we were – I can’t believe you!” Keith heard himself starting to stutter in his anger. He could feel his hands twitching. He wanted nothing more than to hit Lance.

“Keith!” A low angry voice, one he had heard enough times to know it meant business. He threw Lance to the ground and hoped he got at least a few bruises, before spinning around and walking down the path out of the school yard.

“Keith!” Shiro yelled again, except this time Keith felt a hand on his arm.

“Let go of me, Shiro, I’m going home.” Keith ripped his arm out of Shiro’s grasp and kept walking, despite the ruckus behind him.


End file.
